A little bit of fashion … the sequel

Analog, beauty, location, people, photo gear, portrait, street, Uncategorized

remember these: … A little bit of fashion ? Those were all taken a couple of years ago in Brussels, when I met Erika Albonetti for a morning session. They were shot on film with the Rolleiflex twin lens reflex I have been cherishing for a couple of years now.

Time for a new ‘working collectible’, (although you’ve seen some results before with this camera here). The Fujica GW690ii, with a fixed 90mm f3.5 lens. Nicknamed the Texas Leica, it handles more or less like a Leica, but then one for big hands 😉

See the comparison with my Fuji X100f here, a big chuck of camera:

It is a viewfinder camera, but then in the medium format class, the negatives are with their size of  6×9 cm also huge in comparison with the X100f sensor size. (14.66 times bigger area)

This large format gives a narrower depth of film, so even with relatively closed apertures you still get narrow sharpness and softer backgrounds.

Like a lot of analog camera’s of older age, the Fujica has the shutter built into the lens, not in the camera. The shutter is a leaf shutter, a bit similar like an aperture, so opening from the center of the lens. The shutter speed is to be set on the lens as well as the aperture. focusing is manual and the viewfinder proves to be a lot more accurate than the matte screen on the Rolleiflex.

The camera itself is very simple in operation, there’s only a switch to be set to the right type of film 120 or 220, two shutter release buttons (one on top, one on the front side) and a film advancing lever (which you need to crank one and a half turn for a complete transport). There’s no built in light meter and no electronics at all, despite its rather modern looks and recent built year(1985), that’s rare. It has a built in frame counter (counts one unit per 10 frames) on the bottom of the camera. If the counter says 10 it has shot 100 frames. It also came in 6×7 (GW670) and 6×8 (GW680) film formats. These camera’s are well known for their robustness, with a fixed lens and so little things that can break, that seems logical. It weighs 1440 grams. It is frequently sold on Ebay, for prices ranging from €400 – €700.

As said before, focussing is a lot easier on this camera than on the Rolleiflex or for what its worth with the Voightlander Bessa I also have and which has the same film size but only a metering scale on the lens. With the Fujica I get every frame to be sharp (if I pay attention)!

Altough I still like the square format more, I’m ok with this 2×3 aspect ratio which we all know from current digital reflex camera’s. The number of shots per roll gets more limited though (8 in stead of 12) and thus you even need to be more attentive for each shot.

The images were made in Brussels, with Sofi ka, an Ukrainian model traveling Europe on a regular basis. We had a walk in Brussels in the morning, enjoying beautiful light in the city.

I shot this film in colour (Kodak Portra 160) and then another film in Black and white (see below). One film, alle shots: Sofi Ka in Brussels.

All negatives are ‘DSLR-scanned’ and converted to positives with Negative Lab Pro in Lightroom.

I also shot another film, which apparently was a gift from someone, and after further investigation by Ilford, the film turned out to be from 1992 … it came out all mottled and speckled, including the backpaper frame numbers in the negatives 🙁  bummer, although some people seem to appreciate the artistic qualities of it. …

Mjeah, maybe with a little bit of sepia colouring and some vignetting 😀 let me know what you thing

that’ll be all for today, thanks for reading!

Ludwig

 

 

 

New Studio – first results

Nude, projects, studio, studio light setup, Tips and Tricks, Uncategorized

I have finally decided to create a studio space in an old factory building that is situated in my own garden. The building is not really in good shape, but it is more or less weather-proof and this should be enough to keep me running for the next couple of years.

What I did: Within the volume of the first floor (approximately 8 x 12 meters) I created a smaller volume, approx 4.5 x 8 meters that I have completely ‘re-finished’. I got rid of the roller shutters in the windows, I re-plastered the brick walls with natural clay, I put up a new wall in timber structure and re-painted the whole thing. I just finished a large double barn door this week. This ensures the poly-valence of the space. In case I need to bring in large items, that’s perfectly possible.

I wanted to keep the space as simple as possible, and I divided the long side in two halves, a dark side and a bright side. The dark side is handy if you want to have full control over your light, with virtually no light spill off the walls/ceiling. The bright half is interesting whenever you are looking for fill light on your subject.

There’s still a lot to be done, but last week I could do a first shoot in this new space, and I’m very glad my client Sofie has approved to use some of the images in this blog post. The session took about 3 hours and  I’m sure you’ll be as impressed with these results as I was. Sofie never posed before, she’s a natural! Thank you Sofie for your enthusiasm and your confidence!

Some of the images were taken with studio light (studio flash) and others were taken with available light only. All were taken with the help of ambient music 🙂

First a series with a single flash head, standard reflector with 20° grid aimed at a white wall. The grid limits the width of the light beam and creates a nice falloff on the wall. It creates a rather hard shadow. The flash light overrules any available light there might be in the space.

I found them to be very fashionable.

We continued with the same setup, single flash but I’m using another wall as background.

Below the white wall reacts as a perfect reflector for the models face. The shadow gets harder the closer the model comes to the wall.

As I have a dark side and a white side, I have one sharp black/white edge. I used a styrofoam board as a second white surface behind the model. Single flash with 100 cm octa softbox.

From the garden shed I recovered this old work bench, cleaned it up and it will now serve a second life as studio prop. Full of character, a ton of possibilities and well contrasting with the female curves. Two flash heads left and right, small square softbox 66 cm each. By removing the subject from the back wall I can keep the background perfectly black.

Another setting at the dark side, a single softbox slightly higher than the model, model laying down on a black trunk. Using the light as a feather light over the body. Styrofoam panels on the opposite site give just a hint of volume in the shadow areas.

And then at last, over to the bright side again, using available light only, and with the help of the white wall for fill light I get a beautiful overall light.

And last but not least, did we have fun? Yes, of course, we had a lot of fun.

Sofie wrote me in a message afterwards ‘Ludwig, thank you for making this such a wonderful experience … ‘ . Well, I guess that’s what this is all about. Making women feel great about their body, giving them the space they need to build self-confidence and then, as a privileged witness capture this beautiful moment in images.

Thank you for reading this blog post, If you are a photographer and interested in building your own space, I hope you’ve learnt something. If you are thinking about booking a shoot session yourself but you are not really sure what to expect, here you have it. In an afternoon’s time, you can have yourself depicted in beautiful, sensual, intimate images and never forget that moment!

 

 

Erika – a little bit of fashion – in Brussels

Analog, beauty, location, people

I shot this entire day with my 60 year old Rolleiflex camera. Kind of stressy and awkward feeling to get home with nothing but some rolls of film. … I only found out in the evening that I didn’t even have a memory card in my digital camera. … I must have had some kind of enlightenment when I decided in the morning to go ‘all analog’ that day.

Model Kim

people, Personal Pictures

It is always nice to have a good looking model in front of your lens. When ‘en plus’ she is very easy posing, natural, feeling comfortable and joyful, a photographer couldn’t wish for more. I’m happy to present you some images from a shoot last sunday morning. We had planned an outdoor shoot, but the weather didn’t join in, so we decided otherwise. This is what I would call ‘A short portfolio session’. We worked for about one hour and a half, and only in one location.

Please enjoy, click images to view full size.

A short make-up session, …

… and ready to go.